The Beekeeper has been away for 3 weeks, checking the 4 hives before he went, finding all well and flourishing, good honey flow and anticipating, even allowing for leaving plenty of stores for the winter, at least 40lbs + to extract on his return; and I certainly saw plenty of activity whilst he was away.

However, he's back and went down to the hives yesterday and was most perplexed to discover the colonies in apparent good health, busy as usual...but virtually no honey Much less than there'd been 3 weeks earlier, and prob not even enough to keep the bees going through the winter. I know our weather's been very er, changeable, during August but there's been no shortage of bees on the flowers, and I've barely seen a wasp all summer.

He's never had this happen before - any of you Beeks out there experienced this? Comments welcomed please!

No, OH certain no swarmimg, masses of bees and brood in each, queens well-established. And I def haven't seen a line of bees flying off with under-slung honeypots. Just a lack of honey. We've had years when there's been no honey flow as the weather's been crap at the wrong time, but there's been excellent flow and bees everywhere in the garden covered with pollen...

We don't bee-keep for the honey - but we do rather hope they'll end up with enough to see themselves through the winter...

If you had a dry spell as we did earlier in the summer, some plants wouldn't have been producing nectar, or not as much. Buddleia only produces enough depth for honey bees to get at when it has been quite wet for example, although bumble bees and other insects with longer proboscis can reach it.

Here the bees built well through the Spring & early summer but for the last fortnight it's been cooler & definitely wetter.
Stores at this time can get consumed rapidly when the hive is chok full of bees.
70,000 bees not only gather a lot of nectar but when shut at home can consume a large amount of stores.
If you're happy feeding I suggest harvesting earlier in the summer & feeding syrup during wet cold weather.
If you don't like supplementary feeding harvesting smaller amounts more frequently but always making sure there's plenty left for the bees is my advice.
Either that or there's been robbing by wasps or other bees from elsewhere.

The other problem about a cool wet spell is that the bees can't get out and plan all sorts of naughty things, like swarming. In reality, because there are so many bees in the hive at one time there isn't enough 'queen substance' to go round to control them properly, so they think the queen is aging, and breed up queen cells, so watch out for them.

Well, what do you know??? Email from the National Bee Unit arrived this afternoon:

Quote:

Beekeepers in the South West of England may want to check their colonies food levels, as stated in our previous Autumn Husbandry alert. Many of the Bee Inspectors are finding colonies on the brink of starvation with alarmingly low food stores. Remember, a colony will now need 25 kilos of food to see them through the winter. As a reminder, a strong syrup (i.e. 630ml water to 1kg sugar) should be fed to the colony at this time of the year and not a weak syrup. If you have any questions about feeding then please do not hesitate to contact us.